Meandering to and fro . . .

Today is the birthday of Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891), novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. He is best-known for his novels of the sea and his masterpiece Moby-Dick (1851).

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke." - Herman Melville

"Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity." - Herman Melville

"There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself." - Herman Melville

"There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath." - Herman Melville

"To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living." - Herman Melville

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects." - Herman Melville

"Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity." - Herman Melville

"Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?" - Herman Melville

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." - Herman Melville

"To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another." - Herman Melville

Melville image source (1)
Melville stamp image source (1)